Making the Same Mistake TwiceObama's missteps in the health care debate mirror his missteps in last year's campaign.

The Battle for America 2008 feels familiar—but not because it's about last year's election. Authors Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson report a lot of new behind-the-scenes details, so the story feels fresh. What feels familiar are the problems Sen. Obama faced on the campaign trail, which mirror the ones President Obama faces today in selling health care reform.

PRINTDISCUSSE-MAILRSSRECOMMEND...SINGLE PAGE

FacebookMySpace Mixx Digg Reddit del.icio.us Furl Ma.gnolia SphereStumbleUponCLOSE

Now that Barack Obama is president, it's easy to forget how tough it was for him at times during the presidential campaign, particularly during the primaries. It wasn't just that he was often behind in the polls. It's that he sometimes just wasn't very good. He stumbled in debates. He made distracting gaffes. Frequently professorial, he failed to connect with voters. These are the same criticisms we hear today.

Obama talked to the authors about the messy process of finding his voice. "I'm actually sort of a slow starter," he said. "In those first couple of months I wasn't operating on this tight script. [I was] still sort of working out my riff."

On health care, it's clear that Obama is still working out his riff. He's been talking about the subject for months and yet the number of people who disapprove of his handling of the issue continues to rise. In several polls, people now disapprove of his performance more than they approve. He has pushed the idea that health care reform will not increase the deficit—to the exclusion of other arguments he might make—and yet the message is not getting through. In a recent Quinnipiac University poll, voters did not believe, by a margin of 72 percent to 21 percent, that Obama will keep his promise to overhaul the health care system without adding to the deficit.

With Congress leaving Washington for the month of August, Obama says he is looking forward to getting the health care conversation out of the back rooms of Washington and into the country. He may be the only one. The conversation in the country sounds pretty ugly. It's distorted and full of misinformation as partisans from both sides try to whip up their troops. Town halls have turned into shouting matches, and they're likely to get worse as groups from the left prepare to shout down the shouting groups from the right. There's even meta-shouting, as the left and right debate the authenticity of the various shouters.

Whatever the outcome of that debate, this much we know: It's still shouting. If over the last several months, through congressional debates, presidential press conferences, and White House-sponsored town halls, people were unable to hear Obama's message, they're not likely to hear him any better now. The passages in Battle for America in which Obama promises to end the partisan rancor and bring a new way of doing business feel very distant in this period of bickering and spitting.

There's a consensus both inside and outside the administration that Obama has to take control of this conversation. "This is the most precarious time for this legislation," says former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. "The president's going to have to stay connected. He must communicate. He can't afford to lose one day." The job, says Daschle, is to educate the American people and communicate with the lawmakers who have to defend health care reform back home. Obama needs to give members of Congress public cover—but also ammunition for their local battles.

But how? Obama's first problem is that there isn't a single piece of legislation but, rather, five. He can pound on Republicans for delay, but the main holdup right now is the Senate finance committee, which is run by a Democrat. Congress left town having made progress, arguably historic progress, but the five remaining bills, all different, amount to thousands of pages. No wonder the public is confused.

PRINTE-MAILRECOMMEND...RSS

FacebookMySpace Mixx Digg Reddit del.icio.us Furl Ma.gnolia SphereStumbleUponCLOSE

John Dickerson is Slate's chief political correspondent and author of On Her Trail. He can be reached at . Follow him on Twitter.

SPONSORED CONTENT

• Obama's War Begins
  But where does it end?
  Fred Kaplan | Dec. 1, 2009
• The Fog of War
  Obama's Afghanistan speech was confusing.
  John Dickerson | Dec. 1, 2009
• Guarding Obama
  Photos of the president-elect's Secret Service detail.
  Scout Tufankjian | Dec. 1, 2009
• Search for more Politics articles
• Subscribe to the Politics RSS feed
• View our complete Politics archive